TERRA 234: Forbidden Fruit – The Absinthe Drinker

Produced by Henry Harrison

Synopsis

Absinthe was banned in the U.S. and many other parts of the world in the early 20th cen­tury after a faulty sci­en­tific study deter­mined it was likely to pro­voke hal­lu­ci­na­tions, seizures, and vio­lence. Ninety years later, absinthe has re-emerged on the inter­na­tional mar­ket­place because it has been deter­mined, by all accounts, to be safe for con­sump­tion. Why was it banned in the first place? David Cook, a retired Neu­ro­sur­geon and occa­sional absinthe drinker, helps unlock the neu­ro­log­i­cal mys­ter­ies of “the green fairy” and tes­ti­fies about how sci­ence, rit­ual, and his­tory often con­verge in unusual ways. The ulti­mate cause of the absinthe ban was polit­i­cal, due to the influ­ence of wine­mak­ers and tem­per­ance advo­cates, not sci­en­tific. This case reveals yet another exam­ple of how “bad sci­ence” is often­times uti­lized to manip­u­late pub­lic opin­ion. Unfor­tu­nately, this is just as true today as it was 100 years ago. Though peer-reviewed sources con­sis­tently acknowl­edge the prob­lems of cli­mate change, strate­gic mis­in­for­ma­tion still often wins the day with the press, the pub­lic, and our legislators.

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About the Producer

Henry Harrison is the co-owner of Reel Action Media and TheWeeklyFly.com, and he is a Media Management Consultant at Polar Bears International. He has produced, shot, edited, directed, and scripted films from the Hudson Bay to Argentina for a variety of clients, with a variety of HD and other filmmaking and video equipment, and in a variety of formats. His experience includes dinosaur digs in Eastern Montana, the environs around Yellowstone National Park, polar bears on the Hudson Bay, chasing anglers all across Argentina for his own company, and he’s made award winning short documentary films of his own. While he specializes in producing top notch web video content, he has also worked on National Geographic, BBC, and Discovery Channel shoots with varicams and REDs. His goals are to make excellent innovative films that tell intriguing and unique stories that both inform and delight the viewer. He views this career as an unending education in the craft of visual storytelling.